many invitations to participate in the cli
mactic ritual, the casting of the goddess into
the river on the final night.
When that evening arrived, I drove north
through the city to a neighborhood beside
the Circular Canal, where mud-brick houses
merge into a score of similar communities
the slums in which a third of Calcutta's
people live.
Pools of dark water splotched the black
mud lane. Pigs rooted amid coconut husks
and other garbage. Children swarmed; the
infants, as everywhere in India, without
diapers, and the young girls beautiful with
wide eyes and little gilded studs in their noses.
At the end of the lane lay a courtyard with
an ancient pipal tree, an altar to the smallpox
goddess, and a community pandal.
"Welcome," said a young man with a small,
thin moustache. He was T. R. Das, one of the
leaders of the sangha, or neighborhood fra
ternity, organizing the pandal festivity.
Young men brought a chair from their
clubhouse. One offered a cigarette; another
left for a soft drink. "You must be patient,"
Mr. Das said. "We live in a slum area, you
know, and we must walk far to buy even
a Coke."
He spoke English well. He had
480